BEHOLD, THE GRAVE OF A WICKED MAN
Behold, the grave of a wicked man,
And near it, a stern spirit.
There came a drooping maid with violets,
But the spirit grasped her arm.
“No flowers for him,” he said.
The maid wept:
“Ah, I loved him.”
But the spirit, grim and frowning:
“No flowers for him.”
Now, this is it —
If the spirit was just,
Why did the maid weep?
-Stephen Crane
Gladsome Lights 
You have set me thinking!
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Violets are often thought of as signifying innocence and love so there may have been good reasons for it to forbid any violets for the wicked man??
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I’m not a good one for analyzing poetry, but I do get that Crane has made the loving girl the sympathetic character here. Where did that stern spirit even come from? He seems like a demon to me; isn’t it the devil who condemns us? God forgives. “If the spirit was just” doesn’t posit anything as important as the love the girl had and has, and which makes her want to honor the one she loves with flowers.
The idea of “wicked man” for whom we should not mourn isn’t a Christian one. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
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I think I lost my comment. What I thought of was that violets signify innocence and love so the wicked man didn’t deserve any and the spirit was there to make sure he didn’t get any either. Maybe?
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